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Five Flower Songs, Op 47

Introduction

Britten’s Five Flower Songs date from the spring of 1950 and were first performed privately on 23 July of that year at Dartington Hall, by a student choir conducted by Imogen Holst (who went on to become Britten’s amanuensis at Aldeburgh two years later). The songs were dedicated to Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst as a silver-wedding present, and appropriately celebrated the couple’s love of botany. The first performance was an outdoor affair mounted specially for the dedicatees, who owned Dartington and had contributed generously to the cost of setting up Britten’s English Opera Group three years before. By this stage in his career, Britten had already shown himself to be an accomplished setter of English pastoral poetry (notably in the Serenade of 1943), and his response to the texts by Herrick, Crabbe and Clare is economical, imaginative and assured. The Crabbe text, ‘Marsh flowers’, must have had a special appeal for the composer, since it had been Crabbe’s poetry that inspired him to return to Suffolk from the USA in 1942 to compose the opera Peter Grimes, based on Crabbe’s epic poem The borough. In the final flower song, ‘Ballad of green Broom’, Britten depicts a strummed lute accompaniment with a dexterity recalling the imitations of instrumental sonorities in his Hymn to St Cecilia, composed on his voyage home from America.

Recordings

'The programme is delightful and the choir excellent … this has to be one of the strongest winners of the choral award in recent years' (Gramophone)'Polyphony's brand of singing, clean as a whistle, rhythmically wonderfully alive, impeccably tuned and voiced, polished yet always fervent, is justly ...» More

The Rodolfus Choir marks both Benjamin Britten’s centenary year and the 30th anniversary of the choir’s first concert. The album includes the premiere recording of Paul Mealor’s Praise, commissioned especially for the choir.» More

Details

Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon: As yet the early-rising sun Has not attain’d his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to evensong; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a Spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or any thing We die, As your hours do, and dry Away Like to the Summer’s rain; Or as the pearls of morning’s dew Ne’er to be found again.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon: As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to evensong; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a Spring! As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or any thing. We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the Summer’s rain; Or as the pearls of morning’s dew, Ne’er to be found again.

No 2: The succession of the four sweet months
First, April, she with mellow showers

First, April, she with mellow showers Opens the way for early flowers: Then after her comes smiling May, In a more rich and sweet array: Next enters June, and brings us more Gems than those two that went before: Then, lastly, July comes, and she More wealth brings in than all those three: April! May! June! July!

Here the strong mallow strikes her slimy root, Here the dull nightshade hangs her deadly fruit; On hills of dust the henbane’s faded green, And pencil’d flower of sickly scent is seen; Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom, Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume. At the wall’s base the fiery nettle springs, With fruit globose and fierce with poison’d stings; In ev’ry chink delights the fern to grow, With glossy leaf and tawny bloom below; The few dull flowers that o’er the place are spread Partake the nature of their fenny bed. These, with our seaweeds, rolling up and down, Form the contracted Flora of our town.

When once the sun sinks in the west, And dewdrops pearl the evening’s breast; Almost as pale as moonbeams are, Or its companionable star, The evening primrose opes anew Its delicate blossoms to the dew And, hermit-like, shunning the light, Wastes its fair bloom upon the night; Who, blindfold to its fond caresses, Knows not the beauty he possesses. Thus it blooms on while night is by; When day looks out with open eye, ’Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun, It faints and withers and is gone.

When once the sun sinks in the west, And dewdrops pearl the evening’s breast; Almost as pale as moonbeams are, Or its companionable star, The evening primrose opes anew Its delicate blossoms to the dew; And, hermit-like, shunning the light, Wastes its fair bloom upon the night; Who, blindfold to its fond caresses, Knows not the beauty it possesses. Thus it blooms on while night is by; When day looks out with open eye, ‘Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun, It faints and withers and is gone.

John Clare (1793-1864)

No 5: Ballad of green Broom
There was an old man liv'd out in the wood